


losing dogs.

by winterwinterwinter



Category: Fargo (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2019-09-29 12:10:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 15,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17203160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterwinterwinter/pseuds/winterwinterwinter
Summary: grady gets in trouble, and then wes gets in trouble. what is this, the breakfast club?





	1. prologue.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cryptozoid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cryptozoid/gifts).



> the rating may or may not jump to M - i'm not counting on anything sexually or violently explicit entering the text but also! i dunno. just to be safe? also numbers is trans in this.
> 
> set the mood for this one by listening to i bet on losing dogs by mitski.
> 
> this is dedicated to my friend, the septic legend.

"i bet on losing dogs  
i know they're losing and i pay for my place  
by the ring  
where i'll be looking in their eyes when they're down."

"i bet on losing dogs," mitski.

 

 

**ia.**

 

grady remembered the days of their last summer the way he remembered dreams: with blurred edges and a soft focus, everything rose-tinted. their last summer, they’d been nine, and grady’s chest was just beginning to swell. he was able to hide it from his mother under his brother’s hand-me-down shirts, but he knew, with an awful sense of fatality, that his time was coming to an end.

the day of the incident grady remembered with bright, warm colors. even that horrible day he remembered washed in red and pink and orange. he remembered how cool the water of the creek had been - the hottest day of the year, and the chill of the water had stabbed at them like knives… it felt like touching a live wire, their bodies lit up for one electric instant as they jumped in, feet first.

after that summer, that afternoon, everything changed. grady screamed and cried and nearly destroyed his bedroom - ripped the sheets from his bed and threw paintings of kittens from his walls and caved in the faces of two porcelain dolls, knuckles broken and bleeding from the ceramic, before his parents were able to rip the door from its hinges and stop him. after that summer, everything changed. grady didn’t see wes for a long time, and it felt like his heart had been ripped out. for a while he didn’t know what to do with his hands, with the knowledge of another language lurking just at the edges of his mind, a language that he had used nearly every day for three years, at that point.

grady was fifteen before he was able to work anything out to occupy his ever-fidgeting hands. his sister visited one fall weekend, drove down from college desperate for a home-cooked meal. she’d lurked in grady’s bedroom doorway - his parents never reinstalled the door, an eternal punishment for the sin of _having feelings_ \- until he’d noticed her, sliding his headphones down his ears, around his neck. she passed four little joints into his palm, alongside a lighter, and under the rising screams of their parents, she mumbled “you need this more than me.”

the first time grady toked, morrissey whined in his ears and he shivered, flat-back on his bed with the window open to disperse the smoke, an old floral bed sheet tacked over his doorway. that night, when he fell asleep, he dreamt of wes, and water, and crayfish. his curly hair, his freckled nose, his smooth hands… grady burned through the joints in less than a week. by tuesday, he was calling rachael at college and begging her for more.

 

 

**ib.**

 

wes was lonely before grady. he had a silent childhood, a lonely childhood. his parents signed - they were both deaf, and dad tried up until he left, at least - but adults were different from kids, and parents were different from friends. before grady, wes lived inside his mind, in a kingdom of his own imagination, a sovereign wandering his land, teaching every creature how to say its own name and his.

when wes met grady, he never imagined there would be an “after grady.” when you’re a kid, everything lasts forever. the days before christmas. summer vacation. the empty time between dinner and dessert. wes thought they’d be wrestling in the dirt forever, running through the rain barefoot forever, grabbing crayfish from the creek in the forest behind grady’s house with their bare hands _forever_. wes’s life had changed profoundly the week after he and his parents moved into their tiny house and grady showed up on their doorstep, saying with slow, stiff hands _wanna go play?_

no, wes never imagined an “after grady.” but it turned out that there was.

wes didn’t understand it, at first. he understood later, after his mother explained it to him the best she could while he cried, resigned to an abrupt return to his life of solitude. he understood later, when school started again, and the other boys they used to run with finally shunned grady, turning their backs on him because he was suddenly “a girl now.”

wes thought, for a moment, in his nine-year old, third grade mind, that he would be vindicated by the others rejecting grady the way grady had rejected wes so suddenly and so completely, with no explanation. he thought it was fair that they would both be condemned to the aching quiet, to the loneliness, but school had started again, and the boys that they used to run with knew more signs than wes remembered them knowing. wes watched grady from the lunch table he shared with them: slouching so deeply his chin nearly touched the table, simmering like a pot about to boil over, looking outside himself in the purple sweater he wore, hair feebly tied back into a limp ponytail. wes watched him, sitting at the very end of the same corner table every day, hugging himself and staring at his food.

wes managed to corner grady once after the incident. he found him tucked under the jungle gym’s slide, hugging himself and staring at his knees, which were folded up under his chin. it was windy that day, and the skirt he was wearing fluttered against his calves. wes sat right in front of him, perched on his knees in case grady got up to run, but he just sat there, and glared ahead at him.

 _why aren’t we friends anymore?_ wes said.

 _my mom said that you’re bad,_ grady said. _girls shouldn’t hang out with boys like you._

wes remembered that summer afternoon. the water, the rocks, the sun so relentless in its heat. _i saved you,_ wes said. _i’m not bad. we’re friends._

 _that’s not what she said,_ grady said, and his awful glare broke, and he was suddenly on the verge of tears. his jaw was tense, like he was fighting it. _she said you’re a P-E-R-V-E-R-T._

wes had seen that word a few times. in books, in newspapers, on the news. but he wasn’t sure what it meant. he found out later that day, paging through the big dictionary his teacher kept on top of the classroom bookshelf: “pervert, a person whose sexual behavior is regarded as abnormal and unacceptable.”

 _pervert,_ wes thought, staring at himself in the bathroom mirror before bed. in his memory, grady’s hand slowly spelled it, and each slow letter cut through him. staring at himself in the mirror, he remembered the summer heat, grady’s terrified face in the water. he remembered wet skin, and wet grass, and grady’s mother yanking him away and tossing him aside, rushing to her son’s side. _abnormal. unacceptable._


	2. chapter one.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it could be worse. it couldn't be worse. the inciting incident(s).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this fic takes place in a nebulous time before widespread cellphones and personal computers. so... the 90s? a very historically inaccurate 90s.

**iia.**

 

bernie dunham had it coming.

“nice tits, levin!” yeah? nice fist in your face, dunham.

grady had heard it all. seventeen, and no one could come at him with anything new. how… boring. “y-you _bitch_!” dunham had shrieked, cradling his face. yeah, grady had heard that one too. countless times.

it wasn’t grady’s first time using his fists. he was a scrapper, always had been - picking fights over snacks in kindergarten, pulling the girls’ ponytails at ballet practice, holding assholes’ faces in the dirt at recess. “she gets it from your side of the fucking _fam_ ily!” he’d heard his father scream at his mother more than once. no, it wasn’t his first time throwing punches, but fuck, was it hard to get used to, the sharp pain that shot from his knuckles all the way up to his elbow.

grady stared at his hands, idle in his lap, as his mother, margaret, angrily tore down the road. the knuckles of his right hand were bandaged, fixed up nice by the school nurse. he glanced over at margaret and saw her with a cigarette clamped between her teeth, right hand holding the lighter steady as she dove to catch the flame. “i can’t believe you,” she said once she’d taken her first inhale.

“if you get to smoke, so do i,” grady said, reaching for her carton of cigarettes that sat wedged in the cupholder. she slapped his hand away without taking her eyes off the road, chuckling as she did so.

“no,” she said, firm and definitive. she glanced at him, a vaguely disapproving look on her face. “i can’t believe you. ‘it’s against my religion’ - you are so _funny_ , bubeleh. you know you haven’t gone to temple with us since you were fourteen.”

“i’ve lapsed,” grady said, sinking deeper into his seat.

margaret laughed, a short, ugly peal of laughter. “sure you have,” she said. she clicked her tongue. “harry still goes to temple.”

“harry’s in rabbinical school!” grady barked, indignant. “he _has_ to.”

they pulled into the driveway, margaret still sucking down nicotine. grady sat there beside her, trying to ignore the nearly overwhelming itch of desire he had for the cigarettes in the cupholder. he looked at margaret instead, and was embarrassed to see her staring back at him, watching him. she sighed.

“he shouldn’t have said that to you,” margaret said. with her empty hand she reached over and tugged at his cheek, rubbed over the stubbly hairs there that he cherished. “oh, those levin genes… you’re gonna be nothing but hair someday.”

“let’s hope,” grady mumbled, leaning into her rough, familiar touch.

“oh grady,” she said. “my miracle boy. you have it so rough, you know. hard enough without all… all this.” she waved her hand around vaguely, as if the world around them was _all this_. and sometimes, it felt like it was. sometimes it felt like the entire world was against grady. sometimes it felt like the entire world was teetering on his shoulders. “but you can’t just shove your fist in the face of everyone who says nasty things to you.”

“yes, i can,” grady said, unbuckling his seatbelt with a sharp, definitive click. he watched margaret roll her eyes as he shouldered his backpack and left the car. he marched himself to the front door, and let himself in.

one hundred hours of community service. grady laid on his bed, and shoved his seasonally-inappropriate sweater up over his belly so he could scratch along where the edge of his binder met his skin, dewy with sweat. one hundred hours locked in a church-run charity shop, picking through other people’s trash. he rolled over, grabbed at his backpack on the floor, felt around until his hand skated over the hard impression of his cigarettes in the front pocket. _one hundred hours,_ he thought as he practically drank the smoke that filled his lungs. it was a cheap penance, admittedly, for the satisfaction that came from seeing dunham’s lip fat and bloody. _it could be worse._

 

 

**iib.**

 

it couldn’t be worse.

 _one hundred hours?_ his momma said. _right, one hundred?_

wes nodded, the sharp sting of shame pricking at his cheeks.

 _i can’t believe you,_ she said, hands coming down hard. the look on her face nearly broke his heart. _i wish you wouldn’t hang around these boys! you’ve been getting into so much trouble anymore. what did B-E-R-N-A-R-D ever do to you anyway?_ she sighed, and gazed up at him with those big, watery, disappointed blue eyes of hers. she turned, not waiting for an answer, not giving him a chance to explain himself. she stalked off toward the kitchen, leaving wes contrite on the couch.

wes sat there, staring down at his feet. bernard dunham hadn’t done anything to him. in fact, wes was fairly sure they’d never so much as shared a class, much less had a meaningful interaction with each other. but -

it was hiram’s fault. most things were, when it came to the four of them. _i got spray paint,_ he’d said. it had been a sweltering afternoon, the pack of them sitting idle and bored and sweaty in the school parking lot after hours, half-finished cans of soda and beer scattered around their feet with half-finished cigarettes shoved inside them.

wes took the pink can. the three of them - hiram, earl, josiah - began joyfully spraying all sorts of stupid, juvenile declarations over the side of their high school. _chemistry suck dick,_ josiah wrote, punctuating it with a crude blue penis. _fuck piss fuck shit fuck fuck,_ earl wrote. wes stood there watching them, holding his can of pink spray paint tight in one still hand, carefully picking over what irreverence he wanted to scrawl on the side of the school. his thoughts faded to the scene he’d stumbled upon just a day before, in the hallway near the science wing: grady levin, knuckles split and hand shaking, standing over dunham, crumpled on the floor.

wes had to travel a ways down the grapevine to find out exactly what words had been exchanged, and when he finally had someone scrawl _nice tits lehvin_ down in his notebook, he’d felt embarrassment, and fury, and something else. something dark, and somber, and endless. something that reached out of the void he carried within himself and grabbed at his throat from the inside.

 _fuck the co,_ hiram had managed before he dropped his can and turned and ran, too concerned with saving himself to let wes know that they’d been caught. wes was finishing the last triumphant _d_ of _dunham get fucked_ when he felt himself being seized by the bicep. he turned to his right and saw the red face of some vague authority figure - a teacher he’d never met, sweating through an itchy-looking tweed jacket, a particularly confused tie cinching his neck. he glanced to his left and saw hiram and earl and josiah running over the hill toward the baseball field, wes and the car - what they couldn’t carry - left behind.

 _it’s not a big deal,_ wes thought, a half-baked comfort to himself. one hundred sounded like a lot, but it wasn’t. not really. he could do one hundred hours of community service in two weeks, if he worked roughly… eight hours straight almost every day. _it’s not a big deal,_ he thought again.

wes laid in bed that night, staring up at his flaky bedroom ceiling, seeing in slow motion his hand shaking the can of spray paint, seeing in slow motion himself writing _dunham_ and _get_ and _fucked_. he closed his eyes and put himself back in the hallway, watching dunham shout and squirm soundlessly on the linoleum, watching grady flex his hand finger-by-finger. their eyes had met, for a moment - as wes was looking up from the floor, grady was looking ahead. wes’s breath had caught in his throat. he remembered too clearly the last time they’d looked at each other, the last time their eyes had connected - on the playground after the incident, the breeze kicking up and making the wispy hairs that fell out of grady’s ponytail dance around his head. in the hallway, hovering over his conquest, grady’s eyes were filled with fire.

wes’s heart _thudded._


	3. chapter two.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "old-person smell" is just the scent of their cells dying.

**iiia.**

 

grady groaned when he realized what was coming through the tinny speakers.

“he will always be there right beside us, there to lift and there to guide us, and we are gonna be so blessed - ”

christian pop.

“this the only station?” he said, half-serious, to the haggard-looking woman behind the counter. she didn’t humor him, only glared over the rim of her bifocals before she looked back down at the newspaper - the local one, with the obituaries and the funnies and the police reports.

grady was familiar with the thrift shop in the basement of the local lutheran church. he’d bought some things there, before: old starchy dress shirts and thick pullover sweaters, a good pair of loafers that he’d fought his mother tooth and nail to wear to harry’s wedding. for the next two weeks, give or take, the shop would be his home-away-from-home. his myriad of duties to shirk included helping to sift through and process donations, stock shelves, and press sale stickers onto the tags of worn-through boots and belts with cracked leather. he had his walkman stowed away in his pocket, and he anticipated drowning out the abstinent, overenthusiastic girl-groups on the radio once he’d found his place for the day.

he led himself down to the storeroom, which was less a room than a little dungeon, like the woman who’d oriented him had shown him the day before. standing on the landing, under the flicker and hum of fluorescent lights, he looked out at the sea of bags and boxes, the piles of shoes and jeans, towers of _stuff_ that nearly touched the ceiling, in places. the air was heavy with dust. he took a deep breath and exhaled slowly through his nose, coughing a bit. just looking at it all had him aching for a cigarette. jesus, how was he going to go six hours straight without a cigarette?

grady paced up and down the aisles, which were more like thin, trippy little walkways in between the mountains of stuff. “we always have a lot to process, so when you’re down there, you can just start anywhere,” the woman had said the day before. grady’s plan was to fold himself into a corner and plug into his walkman for the next six hours, maybe try to unload a little box or two to give off the illusion of doing.

he found a corner that looked promising by virtue of being mostly hidden by a towering shelf stuffed with books, and made his way toward it. as he did, he realized he could hear a low sort of shuffling noise, louder the closer he got. he turned down a row of tables stacked high with tchotchkes and knick-knacks and rat-eaten cardboard boxes, and stopped dead in his tracks.

sitting on the concrete floor, surrounded by homemade cutoffs and bedazzled denim jackets, was wes, hands folding a pair of jeans, staring right up at him.

 

 

**iiib.**

 

_what are you doing here?_

the first sentence grady signed to him in almost eight years - what are you doing here? how anticlimactic. wes had always imagined it'd be something like _go fuck yourself_ or _leave me alone_ or _take a picture, it'll last longer_. or even just a crooked middle finger paired with a glare. in his wildest daydreams, it was something like _i missed you_ or _how have you been_ or _i'm sorry i was the worst forever, can we be friends again?_ wes was almost disappointed, watching grady's hands. _is that it?_ he thought.

wes stared up at him. _what does it look like?_ he said.

grady looked a little rough. wes had mostly seen him from a distance, the past eight years. close up, wes could see the heavy shadows under his eyes, the way his shoulders frowned. the hair on his face was stubbly, and patchy - nothing wes would be proud of for himself, but he knew without knowing that it was important to grady and he wore it with pride. the hair on his head was looking limp, today, and a little greasy, where it brushed the shoulders of his sweater. his glasses were unflattering, and looked a lot like the pair his father had been sporting the last time wes had seen him, back when he was thirteen. but the eyes behind them were just the same as they’d always been, wes’s favorite part of him.

grady clamped his mouth shut and his face flared up. _okay,_ wes thought.

grady turned, then, and stalked back down the way he came. wes watched him. he went for the corner that was tucked behind the looming bookcase.

for hours - six, just like he’d planned for the day - wes worked, sorting jeans and denim jackets and jorts, his fingertips dyed blue, and he tried not to think of grady levin being in such close proximity, being in the same dank room, breathing the same stale air and probably trying not to gag, just as wes was. it was torturous - suffocating, even - to be so close to the one person he wanted nothing more than to have an honest conversation with, who he actually _could_ have an honest conversation with, and know that he couldn't. it was different than when they were at school. when they were at school, it was easy to pretend like grady didn't exist, that he had no bearing on wes's life, no place in his thoughts. but in that little room bursting with their shared energies, confronted with him living, existing, _being_ , it was -

the lady in charge - curly blonde bob and big, round glasses with an unmistakably owlish quality; lips like two bloody papercuts - was walking down the basement stairs as he tightened the plastic handles on his last bag of garbage for the day. it was interesting, what people thought could be donated to a charity shop. he'd seen old bags of snacks, colorful plastic shards of toys, and wads of used tissue that had him going upstairs to grab some rubber gloves. almost involuntarily, he glanced toward the back of the room just in time to see grady standing and pressing the back of his hand to his forehead, like he’d been doing anything all day besides, probably, listening to music and staring at his own knees. the lady, her name was something like edith or enid or esther, something befitting his great-grandma, touched wes’s shoulder. he grabbed at the back pocket of his jeans, but suddenly (so - suddenly) grady was there, standing to his right, saying _do you want me to - ?_

wes stared at him. _what the hell?_ he thought. for eight years, they hadn’t talked, hadn’t made eyes at each other, hadn’t done - anything. they had lived completely separate and severed lives, wes with his rowdy friends who came and went and his “gifted” reading classes and grady with his… something? nothing? but there they were, standing in a church basement, flanked by junk and trash and the remnants of other peoples' lives on all sides, and grady was offering to interpret for him, for some reason. wes felt the notepad half in his hand. it was an annoyance, of course, and if it was just for a moment, he could deal with - he could deal with grady being nice to him, engaging him, for just one moment, one piteous moment, if it meant he wouldn’t have to scribble questions and strain to read this woman's mouth

_fine,_ wes said.

wes wanted to just look at the floor, at his shoes, at the divots of the concrete, but he had to watch. he felt a vague sense of familiarity and a little bit of nostalgia for his childhood, their childhood, when he and grady shared rude, secret jokes about their classmates and grady’s brother.

_she wants to know if you’ll be back tomorrow at the same time,_ grady said.

wes stopped himself from asking what he wanted: _will you be?_ instead, he said yes. edith-enid-esther smiled at the both of them, said something that looked a lot like thank you. _six hours of slow torture down,_ wes thought as he mounted the stairs ahead of grady and hurried out of the church, _ninety-four to go._

it was hot outside. blissfully hot - wes shrugged off his flannel and the skin of his arms, chill from the unrelenting aircon in the church, sang. it was four already, but the summer sun was still hanging high. he walked across the parking lot to his car. beat-up and dented and ugly as she was, wes adored her. he ran his hand along her side, over the chipped burgundy paint, and fished his keys from his pocket.

in his rearview, he saw grady leaning against the wall of the church, fiddling with his music again. wes considered driving up to him, asking if he wanted a ride. he wondered if what happened just moments before was enough, and wes could just walk up to him and start saying anything he wanted. he stared at grady in the mirror, chewed at his lips as he weighed the pros (mostly variants on _talk to grady again_ \- he’d had a drop, two, and now he was fucking thirsty for it), the cons (namely, _talking to grady_ \- it’d been eight years, what could that entail, now?), and he blinked himself back to earth when a car suddenly blocked his view.

sitting in the driver’s seat was - was it? - a woman that looked a lot like the margaret levin wes remembered: thick dark hair gathered into a clip, heavy glasses, nose just like grady’s. wes watched grady climb into the car - yeah, must be. his heart nearly stopped and his entire body flinched when margaret jerked her head, suddenly, to the left, looking out her window right at wes’s car, still quiet in its spot. she refocused on the parking lot almost immediately, and the pair of them drove off, and wes was alone.

 

 

**iiia.**

 

when did wes start looking like - _that?_


	4. appendix for: chapter two.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> grady has a bit of a moment.

**iiia.**

 

“how was it?”

grady looked at margaret. he’d been staring out the window since he’d climbed into the car, picking over his interactions with wes. wes, who was… different from how grady remembered.

wes was _hot._

grady hadn’t seen wes up close in a long time. and in grady’s mind, at least until that morning in the church basement, wes was still the same nine-year old as he always was, just longer, taller. stretched out, like a cartoon. seeing him crouching on the floor, and then at his full height - had to be over six feet, holy hell - grady came to the heart-pounding realization that while he was growing and changing, wes was doing the same. and, clearly, puberty had been much kinder to him.

“it was whatever,” grady said, returning his eyes to the town they raced through, very consciously trying not to think about wes, and how soft his hair looked. “fuckin’ work. smelled like moths.”

“language.”


	5. chapter three.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> grady? he's an asshole.

they spent almost the entire week silent in the church basement, wes making slow progress on chunks of junk here and there, grady running out of his own cds almost immediately. he began rifling through any box or bag he saw with some inside, accidentally stumbling into doing what he was supposed to do as he picked through endless copies of the soundtrack to the bodyguard and beatles cds.

 

 

**ivb.**

 

it was friday, and there were about seventy-six hours left in their sentence.

wes hefted a box down from the pile in the corner he’d been working at all week. he didn’t want to do the work - of course he didn’t want to do the work - but if he was stuck there, he wasn’t going to be a _grady_ about it and just twiddle his thumbs and stare at the walls for six hours a day. he was going to do - something. and he’d made good progress, lugging what felt like five tons of garbage out to the dumpster every day and moving boxes to the front of the room, near the stairs, so the ladies would know what was processed. everyday when he left, they smiled at him and patted his shoulders, and he watched them mumble favorably amongst each other. some of them passed him notes that said _you’re doing so well, thank you so much, see you tomorrow._ they reminded him, faintly, of his grandmother in her later years, and he found himself warmed by their doting hands and friendly smiles.

and it was even a little interesting, at times. among the broken lamps and discarded fast food kids’ meal toys, wes unearthed some gems: a beautiful wooden box with hand-carved details, a brown sweater with a sickly-looking horse on it, a pair of cream-colored boots with the slightest bit of scuffing on the toes. the more boxes he unpacked, the more intrigued wes became by what motivated people to give things away. he’d found a photo album packed with old, weathered, sepia-toned photographs of grim-looking men and grinning ladies, and the further he paged through the dewier his eyes had gotten, seeing baby pictures and polaroids of children on bikes. _who forgot you?_ he wondered vaguely. _who wanted to forget you?_

wes unfolded the flaps of the box he’d set down. dozens of little black bead eyes stared up at him from inside. beanie babies. it made him a little sad to see them crammed together, piled on top of each other. it almost had the appearance of a colorful little mass grave, their floppy little bodies piled high. he reached in, and let his gloved hand feel around, grasping here and there. he pulled out a limp little black cat, all four of its paws white, with a hard, tiny pink nose. it didn’t have its heart-shaped tag anymore, so wes grabbed at its back legs, looking for the second tag, which told him that the little black cat’s name was zip.

wes gazed into its blank bead eyes before he stowed it in the pocket of his shirt, its head hanging over the side.

 

**iva.**

 

grady waited five minutes. he waited ten. he waited fifteen.

he went back inside the church, dragging his feet back down to the basement where myra - one of the old bats who sat behind the register reading agatha christie all day - said “forget something?”

“can i, uh, use the phone?” he said.

he tried home first, and when margaret didn't pick up, he tried the office.

“oh, sweetheart,” his mother said, “i’m so sorry. i’m stuck here until, what - at least another hour or so. i forgot to tell you it was going to be late tonight.”

grady’s hand tightened around the plastic of the phone, squeezing. “it’s fine, i’ll figure something else out,” he said, barely disguising his anger.

“well, you know, it’s times like these i wish you had your license…,” she said, resentment dripping from her tone.

“whatever,” grady said, “bye.”

he walked back out the door, back out into the june heat. he leaned against the wall and fished his cigarette carton from his backpack, only to feel his heart drop when he immediately realized that he’d left the lighter in his mother’s car. “are you fucking kidding,” he mumbled, staring down at the useless carton of cigarettes in his palm. “fucking kidding.”

he wanted to scream, or kick at something, or just cry, but he didn’t. he took a deep breath instead, took his glasses off and closed his eyes tight, and counted to ten, just like the therapist had taught him when he was younger. when he was done counting, he opened his eyes, replacing his glasses on his face, and glanced around - at the sky, at the church, at the grass, at the trees. he realized wes was still there, idling in his parking spot, the same one he’d claimed the first day, right across from the side entrance. grady narrowed his eyes, looking through the back window and catching wes in the rearview, staring right at him.

grady marched up to the driver’s side door, and watched wes try to ignore him before he started smacking hard against the window, wes jumping in his seat when grady slammed his palm against the glass. “hello!” grady shouted. wes rolled the window down almost immediately. “yeah, hello!”

grady drew his hands up to his chest, but wes was faster than him. _do you need a ride?_ wes said, hands moving so fast and so suddenly it seemed almost thoughtless, his offer.

grady stared down at him in the car. he peered inside, scanning around for a built-in lighter. his eyes skipped around the center console, the radio -

_i can give you a ride,_ wes said again, breaking grady's concentration. he stared down at him in the car.

_okay,_ grady said, half-relieved he wouldn’t have to wait an hour for his mother or trudge through town by himself, scuttling over stretches of sidewalkless road, working up a disgusting sweat in his sweater, binder, jeans; half-aghast at having to spend even more time with wes. wes, who was _so…_ grady walked around the front of the car, trying to think about anything besides the way wes’s hair curled around his earlobes.

 

they rolled to a stop at a red light, behind a truck, and wes turned toward grady. _do you need anything?_ he said. _should i stop somewhere?_

grady’s belly rumbled lowly under his backpack, which he held protectively on his lap. he hadn’t eaten anything, not since morning, but he knew there was plenty in the fridge and pantry. he grabbed his cigarette carton again, and found it was woefully empty, just two cigs rattling around in it. he would have to wait until margaret got home if he wanted more than that, and even then she might not share if she returned in a foul mood; she tended to sit on the porch in her work clothes and chainsmoke, if she came home with the day still plucking at her.

_we’ll stop. i have to get gas anyway,_ wes said. grady looked over. wes was riding on empty.

they pulled into the nearest gas station, once they got going again, and wes got out and went to go pay. grady sat patiently in his seat, looking around at the interior of the car. but there was nothing really there to betray anything about wes - no trash, no stray items, no extra clothes, nothing.

when wes came back, he opened his door and tossed a bright orange package over to grady. it landed on top of his backpack, a packet of peanut butter cups. _what’s this?_ grady said.

_you used to like those a lot,_ wes said. _you still do, don’t you?_

_yeah,_ grady said, before staring down at the package in his lap. he traced over the familiar yellow lettering on the front while wes pumped the gas. he tore the package open, and he remembered being eight on halloween, dressed as a raggedy little pirate. in his memory, he traded wes for all his peanut butter cups, in return giving him all the gum he could pick out of his horde. _do you still chew gum?_ grady wondered, watching as wes finished up, wriggling the pump in his hand, shaking out the last drops of gasoline. _liked juicy fruit._

when wes slid back into the driver’s seat, grady thrust one of the two peanut butter cups into his chest. wes looked from grady’s hand to his face. he tentatively took the cup, and grady returned to the package to dig out the other one for himself. _thanks,_ he saw wes say out of the corner of his eye.

_thank you,_ grady said.

ten minutes later, they were pulling into grady’s driveway. _it looks the same,_ wes said after leaning out the window to get a good look.

_well yeah,_ grady said, _it’s a house, houses look the same. they don’t change._

wes smirked at him, which made grady’s stomach twist and his heart shudder. _i know,_ he said. _you know, you don’t have to be such an asshole._

_i’m an asshole?_ grady said.

_yeah,_ wes said, _you are._ his smile never abated, only grew across his cheeks. grady drew his eyebrows down, and in doing so his eyes finally caught on the little stuffed cat head peeking out of wes’s front shirt pocket.

_what’s that?_ he said. wes glanced down at himself, and shrugged.

_had a box of these today,_ he said. _i thought this one was cute._

grady reached out and flicked its hard, plastic nose. wes swatted him away, mouth tight and eyes wide, appalled. _see? you_ are _an asshole!_ he said before patting the little black cat on its bulbous head.

grady snickered. _it’s a stuffed animal,_ he said.

wes narrowed his eyes, but did nothing else. he returned his hands to the steering wheel for a moment, before he pulled back and said _guess i’ll see you tomorrow._

_no,_ grady said. wes wore a confused expression, which grady tried not to think of as adorable. _i have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow._

_okay,_ wes said. after a moment, he asked _is something wrong?_

grady laughed, a short ugly bark he had never been fond of. wes’s ears and cheeks reddened. _not much, just everything,_ grady said.

_sorry,_ wes said.

_it’s fine,_ grady said. _thanks for the ride._

_no problem,_ wes said.

grady wanted to stand at the door and watch wes back out the driveway, maybe raise his hand and wave goodbye, and smile if wes waved back. but instead, he made himself unlock the front and walk up the stairs, into his room to hide away all night, his stereo drowning out his desires.

 

**ivb.**

 

wes started laughing when he turned the car off after he’d parked in his spot at home.

grady had left his candy trash - the packaging, the little crinkly brown paper that hugged the peanut butter cups - in his seat, sitting where he had once sat.

_what an asshole,_ wes thought, grabbing the trash.


	6. chapter four.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> puzzle pieces.

**va.**

 

_how was the doctor?_

grady stared up at wes, lost in his haze of nirvana and the ebbing marijuana that clouded his brain. it took him another few moments before he managed to process what wes had said.

“oh!” he breathed, nearly involuntarily. _it was the doctor._

wes stared down at him, brows quirked - and… ?

grady shrugged. _it was fine,_ he said.

 _everything okay?_ wes said.

 _do you need to know or something?_ grady said, putting at much attitude as he could into it. he watched wes toe at the concrete floor with his boot, his ridiculous fucking cowboy boot.

 _no,_ wes said, an unnecessary tag on the end of their exchange. he looked bashful, maybe a little angry, given the hard red color of his cheeks. he looked like a kicked puppy. he turned away, then, and stalked back toward his preferred corner, which was looking much emptier after his first week of work.

it was just a regular appointment. or, as regular as his doctor appointments could be, anymore. doctor rosenthal had banged on grady’s knees with the hammer, listened for his heartbeat, checked his ears. called him the wrong name twice before correcting himself.

when grady had gotten home that night, he gave himself his shot, and it was as shitty as it always was, but everything felt better.

grady watched wes’s back as he went through a pile of books. his shoulders were nice, the kind grady wished he had - strong-looking and broad, but still with a slightness to them. all of wes was slight, actually, surprisingly thin. most of the time there was a bit of a thickness to him, a bulkiness thanks to the heavy coats and boots in the everlong winter. grady picked himself up off the floor, paused his cd and delicately set his walkman on a shelf. he walked over to wes, and set himself back down, crouching beside him.

wes didn’t notice him, or he purposely ignored him. and grady couldn't blame him for that, he'd been rude - an _asshole,_ some would say. so grady tapped at his shoulder. _can i get a ride again today?_ he said.

wes eyed him a moment, but he said _sure. no problem,_ he added.

_thanks._

grady watched wes feel the covers of each book, flip quickly through them, checking for rips and stains. some of them were thoroughly wrecked, damaged by fire or water or just beyond old, too old to read, pages deep brown and indecipherable; some were in good shape, and wes piled them accordingly. he was focused on his task. grady sank, sitting with his legs folded up under him, slouching.

 _need something?_ wes said after a moment.

 _no,_ grady said. _i’m just bored i guess. and i want you to distract me,_ he thought. _  
_

_me too,_ wes said. he sat back, spreading his legs out, looking long and slim in his light blue jeans. their thighs touched, and it shouldn’t have made grady flinch, but it did. wes didn’t seem to notice, and just sat there beside him. _what’s up?_ wes said, eventually.

 _i don’t know,_ grady said. _nothing much. everything the same. you?_

 _nothing,_ wes said.

 _doing anything this summer?_ grady said, feeling like a ten-year old trying to ask his best girl friend if her summer plans included him. not that he'd ever experienced that himself. he'd been friendless for embarrassingly long. _after this is all done for._

wes shrugged. _i don’t think so,_ he said. _go to my aunt’s, ride horses._

 _your aunt has horses?_ grady said.

wes smiled, corners of his mouth soft, fond, curling. _yeah, she has two,_ he said. _she’s on a trip right now and when i’m done here i have to drive there and take care of them. she asked mom and i to do it._

grady imagined wes on horseback. he looked like a real cowboy in full regalia, or a shabby prince, riding a dappled steed. grady pictured him against a sunset, feeding the horse sugarcubes right out of his palm. _that’s cool,_ grady said, even though it wasn't really.

 _you?_ wes said.

 _no,_ grady said immediately. perhaps - too fast?

 _you guys used to go to the beach, didn’t you?_ wes said, a handsome look of concentration on his face, brow creased like he was really digging through his memories.

 

**vb.**

 

wes watched grady laugh, humorless and sudden, almost like a surprise.

 _that stopped a long time ago,_ grady said. wes watched him fiddle with the laces of his dark, heavy combat boots for a moment. _my dad left us._

 _just like yours_ was unspoken between them. wes saw it in the way grady looked at him from under his lashes. his sweeping, dark lashes. _why?_ wes said.

grady shrugged. _you know why,_ he said.

 _i’m sorry,_ wes said, echoing what he'd hated those first few years after his own father had left: teachers, older classmates, his mom's whole family - _i'm so sorry wes. it's not your fault._ even though it was, it really was. just like how it was grady's fault.

 _don’t be,_ grady said, eyes narrow. _he was an asshole even before that. don’t you remember? he was always screaming at mom and me._

wes did remember. he’d never heard it, of course, but he remembered the sight of it: harold’s face red and tense and open, eyes bulging. slapping grady on the wrists, shoving him, mouth wide around words that wes later learned were _fuck_ and _behave_ and _i’ll spank you._ margaret levin prying them apart - _don’t touch her like that._

 _good riddance,_ wes said.

 _he left before i started H-O-R-M-O-N-E-S,_ grady said. _i saw him at rachael’s graduation a month ago. been a year._

wes watched grady take a slow breath. he wanted to say _stop, you don’t have to tell me, you don’t have to tell me anything, ever,_ but grady was moving his hands again, faster. _he didn’t realize it was me, at first,_ grady said, _and then he recognized me, and he went ballistic. like, 'what the fuck have you done to her? what did you let her do?' asswipe._

it was painful to watch grady talk like that, recount what had been said to him, about him. once he was finished, wes instantly dropped his eyes back down into his lap, a reprieve, like taking a long drink of water on a hot day. they sat together silently, their thighs touching.

wes saw grady’s hand around his wrist before he felt it. he was looking up before grady had a chance to shake him, get his attention. grady took his hand back as soon as wes looked into his face again.

grady smiled. it was a small smile, grady surely self-conscious, but it was genuine, almost cloying, unlike all the smarmy little smirks and spiteful grins wes had seen from him. wes wrapped his eyes around it, studied all the bristles spread out across his cheeks, under his nose, over his jaw. dove into the little black pools that were the corners of his perfect mouth. _i always liked talking to you,_ grady said. _i don’t have to hear myself talk this way. i don’t like hearing my own voice._

 _your asl is really good,_ wes said. he couldn’t help it - it was the first thing he’d noticed about grady, that monday. he spoke with just as much fluency as he did when they were kids and speaking to each other every day, hell - he spoke even _more_ fluently than when they were kids. it was beautiful to wes, grady’s white hands moving and sweeping. he thought for sure that grady would’ve rusted up a bit, or forgotten entirely. but no. on monday, all the air had whooshed out of wes’s body when he watched grady interpret for him.

 _thanks,_ grady said, and didn’t elaborate.

 

**va.**

 

 _so was your mom busy again?_ wes asked as they walked out to the car.

 _no,_ grady said, feeling the back of his neck prickle. lying had always come easy to grady, so it was nothing to tell his mother he was going to “hang around town” after community service. _i thought i would give her a break. she’s always running around for me._ and it was nothing to pretend like he didn’t have an ulterior motive with wes.

 _so you’re not a complete asshole like i thought,_ wes said, punctuated with a mischievous grin. grady whipped a hand out and beat his arm. _jokes._

 _not funny ones,_ grady said.

 _funnier than the jokes most kids tell around you,_ wes said. they both knew exactly what he was talking about.

grady had to give it to him. _you’re right,_ he said before grabbing the passenger door handle and wrenching it open.

the sky darkened as they drove, heavy gray clouds rolling in from the north. they rolled the front windows down and let the breeze tumble through the car. grady pushed his sweater - mohair, a poor choice for the heat but it was hard to fight his compulsion to hide himself - up to his elbow and stuck his hand out the window, let it dangle.

wes idled at the last stop sign before to turn for grady’s cul-de-sac, car vibrating around them. the little black beanie baby cat was splayed under the windshield, another passenger. grady stared into its little eyes, fixated until he realized, finally, that they had been idling for too long. he looked at wes, who was looking at him, soft in the eyes. watching him commune with a stuffed animal. grady felt a little stupid, and very self-conscious. _stupid,_ he thought.

 _you want me to take you home?_ wes said.

grady hadn’t had a friend in a long time. he remembered botched sleepovers in the fifth grade, trying to fit in with the girls. a puzzle piece jammed into a spot where it didn’t belong, a place where it almost looked right but - wasn’t. he felt like a fish flopping in some fisherman's calloused hand, unable to breath, air stinging -

 _i have the horses to check on,_ wes said. _but i can stay with you for a little._

 _have you ever smoked weed?_ grady said, abrupt and clumsy and stupid. _stupid!_ he thought again, banging on the tinny walls of his mind.

wes laughed out loud, a sound that tickled grady deep inside. _what do you think i am?_ wes said, an extra chuckle escaping him.

grady felt hot embarrassment fanning across his face. he dug his heels into the soft interior of the floor that vibrated under him, the red almost-fuzzy carpet. _i don’t know,_ he said. _a good boy? a cowboy?_ and he gazed pointedly at the red bandana tied around wes's neck, the knot sitting perfectly in the hollow of his throat.

 _i’m not good,_ wes said. _don’t you remember what we were just doing? i got in trouble too._

grady snorted. _for what, stepping on a dandelion?_

wes peered at him, adorably suspicious. _why do you think i’m so good?_ he said. he leaned in close, almost too close for comfort. _your mom was convinced i was a scoundrel, back then._

grady stared at him, nowhere else for his eyes to go. he wracked his brain for some response - something clever, something stupid, anything - but he came up short, short, _short._

the sharp honk of a car saved him. he jumped in his seat, glancing the rearview and spotting a car idling behind them, lights bright. wes was slow to notice, still focused on grady. grady could feel his eyes studying his neck, the collar of his sweater, just the way he'd examined wes's bandana.

wes settled back into his seat, replaced his hands on the wheel. instead of turning left down grady’s street, he made a right.

 

**vb.**

 

 _so you’ve smoked weed,_ grady said, _have you ever smoked a real cigarette?_

it was erotic. wes felt everything below his collarbones thrumming as he watched grady light the cigarette where it was balanced between his lips, and when grady looked at him, his head thumped in tune with the rest of him. _nervous?_ grady said, grinning around the cigarette.

grady took the first inhale, then he passed it off to wes. wes held it between two fingers, like a joint, and looked skeptically at grady. he shrugged. _figure it out,_ he said, smirking a little manically. wes suspected that he just wanted to watch him hack a lung when it went down wrong. and he did spiral into a coughing fit, unprepared for the sting of the cigarette, the dense smoke in his mouth. he was too busy coughing to look, but he knew grady was laughing; when he’d gathered himself, tacky little tears still ringing his eyes, grady was shaking off a few extra giggles.

grady took the cigarette back.

 _that can’t be good for you,_ wes said. grady shrugged.

 _so what?_ he said.

they were in a dilapidated little gazebo on the hard end of town, in the rundown park that had been abandoned a decade ago when the newer one a stone’s throw from the middle school had opened. they sat almost glued to the little bench, its wood soft and damp and probably weak, dangerous. rain fell around them, dribbled through the roof where there were gaping holes. there was a puddle at their feet, rain falling just short of their knees.

 _so you wanna get lung cancer?_ wes said.

 _shut up, mom,_ grady said. _i get enough of this._

wes shoved him. _can i ask you something?_ wes said, his eyes snagging on grady’s too-much sweater again. grady noticed him looking, and he didn’t say anything about it.

 _about what?_ grady said.

 _you know,_ wes said.

grady’s face became hard, guarded, all of a sudden, his eyebrows meeting in a hard line. wes quickly realized his error, and felt a sinking feeling, imagining how it came off. _fuck,_ he thought. he'd almost forgotten grady's ability to turn his mood at the drop of a hat, jovial one moment, weepy the next, venomous after that.

“fucking christ,” grady said, spitting out his cigarette and grinding it hard-hard-hard into the soft wooden floor of the gazebo. _is that all you people think about?_ he bothered to sign, and then he was getting up, like he was going to walk out into the rain and slide home, catch a cold, so wes said -

“no!” and grady turned back to him, trying very hard to mask his surprise. he hadn't heard wes's voice since they were kids, like everything else in their friendship - not since then, not since then, not since then. wes felt exposed, grady looking at him like that, and he felt the color in his cheeks. _i didn’t mean that at all._

grady looked at him, wary.

wes stood. _i just wanted to know if you’re scared,_ he said.

grady’s eyes were wide as saucers behind his unfortunate glasses, mouth askew. _scared of what?_ he said, but he looked so disarmed and so suddenly skittish that wes thought he had his answer.

 _the medicine,_ wes said, _i don’t know, the hospital._

grady closed his mouth and sat back down on the damp bench they’d been perched on. wes followed him. their thighs touched again, and neither of them moved.

 

**va.**

 

_i just wanted to know if you’re scared._

grady’s mother had asked him if he was scared, the first time grady had to administer his own shot. she sat in the cramped bathroom with him, perched on the edge of their ugly pink tub while he pulled his skin taut with a shaking hand. she asked him if he was scared after his second shot, a week later. “are you scared to change?” she said. “are you scared of the changes?”

grady came back to himself, sitting in the wet gazebo, shielded from the rain but still with a layer of water sitting over his skin, hair, clothes. his mouth was dry. he licked his lips. _not much anymore,_ he said. _a lot of the things i was scared of weren’t so bad. it turned out fine. but i guess i’m scared of surgery. but only because i’ve never really had surgery before._ every once in a while, he had a nightmare about it. himself, asleep, oblivious, and surrounded by dangerous things - scalpels, knives, forceps, scissors. he woke up gasping, or he woke up like normal, just shaken and unsettled.

 _why?_ he said.

 _i would be,_ wes said. _i’m a coward._

 _don’t call me brave,_ grady said. _please don’t call me brave or anything._ he hated that. after people got over it, over him, the next thing out of their mouths was usually coos of you're so brave, you're so brave. he hated it. he wasn't brave. he was just himself, for better or worse. _  
_

_why?_ it was wes’s turn.

 _because i’m not,_ grady said. _i’m terrified._

_didn’t look terrified when you broke D-U-N-H-A-M’s nose._

_D-U-N-H-A-M is a piece of shit,_ grady said. _i’m not scared of gunk under my shoe. why would i be scared of him? it’s everything else._

wes stared at him for so long without saying anything that it made grady uncomfortable. and then, he finally burst into a shock of laughter that caught on fast, and left grady sharing in his amusement.

 

“where were you?” margaret asked that night when grady walked through the kitchen door at nearly eight. she dragged bemused eyes up and down his body, taking in the water that dripped from the fibers of his sweater, his hair.

“nowhere,” he said. “dinner?”

“not tonight,” margaret said, raising a glass - red wine, swirling elegantly in a charlie brown-printed welch’s jelly jar-turned-drinking glass. she looked skeptical, one manicured eyebrow raised at him. she knew he didn't have much of anyone besides her, and besides rachael.

“good,” he said, “already ate.”

wes had driven them to his house, ran inside to ask his mom to go take care of the horses. they’d grabbed shitty snacks from the store, and grady directed them to the old one-room schoolhouse a mile outside town, where they smoked weed and traded stories, filling in the gaps of the past years without each other. grady told wes more about his father leaving, wes told grady about all the petty trouble he got into. grady told wes about his bat mitzvah, full of family and empty of friends, because he hadn't had any. wes told grady about his trip to tennessee to see his grandma before she died. he told grady about a rodeo, about horses, about the first time he kissed a boy -

grady curled up in his bed, having shed his wet outer layer. he felt like he’d been an unfinished puzzle for ten years, a jagged gaping hole in his center, wishing for the missing piece that he needed to see the whole picture with clarity. laying in bed, still rain-damp and half-high on the evening with wes, he felt like he’d finally found the missing piece.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i literally can't look at this anymore so i hope it reads with any kind of sense or clarity.


	7. preamble to: chapter five.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> wes has a bit of a moment.

**vib.**

 

 _did you have fun yesterday?_ momma said. it was morning and she was still in her silky blue pajamas, her hair sticking out every which way as she sat on the edge of wes’s bed. _staying out of trouble?_

 _yes momma,_ he said. and it was true. he was staying out of trouble, at least the kind that could land him a punishment, whether it was community service or a trip to the police station. but then there was the vague, nebulous trouble of grady, and whatever was going to happen with that.

wes - wes wanted a lot to happen, if he was being honest with himself. he wanted to sit in grady’s treehouse, like they used to, and chatter on for hours. instead of playing pretend, they could just shoot the shit. he wanted to take grady to the diner late at night, like he did with earl and hiram and josiah on restless winter nights when they had too much energy and nothing to do. he wanted to hold grady’s hands, he wanted to tuck hair behind grady’s ears. he wanted to kiss grady on the mouth, behind the ear, across his collarbones, down -

 _who were you with?_ momma said. _the boys?_

 _yeah,_ wes lied, because he wasn’t sure what would happen if he told her he was with grady levin the day before. he remembered the incident and its fallout vividly. after he’d come home crying, dropped off by margaret levin without the company of grady, momma had written a letter to grady’s mother. days after, momma told him _don’t play with (grady) anymore,_ just like margaret levin had.

 _why momma?_ he’d said, lip trembling again at the thought of grady and himself, both alone. both without each other.

she had just stared down at him, pitying and a little weepy and a little angry. and she said, _(he) doesn’t deserve you._

momma, all of five feet, stood and reached to tangle her hands in wes’s wavy curls. she ruffled his hair, smiled fleetingly, and left the room.

wes wanted to see grady. he wanted so badly to see grady. he wanted grady to laugh at him while he choked on smoke again. he wanted to watch grady’s eyes get all glassy, the way they did when he smoked a joint.

 _you’re a pervert,_ the dark part of his mind said. _pervert. P-E-R-V-E-R-T._ he saw grady’s little white hands under the heavy purple cuffs of his sweater.

wes didn’t see grady.


	8. chapter five.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> do you like roller coasters? me either. let's go on one!

wes was going to ask grady out.

grady had coaxed wes away from work that day, wednesday, about fifty-four hours left to go by the time they would leave that day, with a joint and a cozy little spot he’d cleared in the corner, under the high-sitting single window, which he’d cracked. if anyone came to check their progress - unlikely, the ladies mostly ignored them, especially grady - they’d have plenty of time to trash the weed and scramble from their hiding place unseen so they could get back to their work. or, so wes could get back to his work, and grady could get back to pretending.

they sat shoulder-to-shoulder, thigh pressed against thigh, and passed the joint between them.

 

**viia.**

 

 _how far have you gone?_ grady said, head tipped back against the cold concrete wall behind them, as he watched wes blow smoke. wes’s forehead creased, and he coughed a little. it was cute. grady was far gone enough to let himself think that without any repercussions. _wes is cute,_ he thought again, grinning vaguely, _wes is cute._

 _what?_ wes said, a touch of disbelief hovering in his eyes.

 _how far have you gone?_ grady said again, suddenly feeling very aware of himself. was this rude? it was definitely invasive. _with another person,_ he slowly added, for clarity. he saw a spark of realization in wes's face. his cheeks got all pink, and he handed grady the joint. grady stuffed it between his teeth, hastily said _actually, forget it. that's stupid. forget it._

wes waved him off. _whatever. hand stuff,_ he said, _that’s it._ and he didn't elaborate, and he didn’t ask grady in return. perhaps he already knew the answer.

 

**viib.**

 

wes could feel it trembling on his hands all day: _do you want to go out with me?_ he kept thinking grady would misunderstand, get confused - _sure,_ he’d say, _where are we going?_ thinking it was a platonic playdate, like when they hung out last week in the old, empty schoolhouse. and wes would have to explain, cheeks on fire, _no, i meant like a date._ he hoped it wouldn't come to that, if he could muster the courage at all. he imagined smacking himself. courage? you don't need courage to do this. _at least, i shouldn't._

wes had eyes, after all. he had eyes and for the past week he had been using them to watch grady, watch him talk and watch him just _be,_ and what he saw was telling him that there was something there. the way grady looked at him, sometimes, the way his eyes got all heavy when he was high. they fell back into step so easily, so perfectly - there had to be something there. and whatever was there, wes wanted it. wanted to hold it, feel it, just as he wanted to hold grady.

they walked out of the church together, like they had been. grady was talking about some concert he had gone to with his sister, and wes was only sort of paying attention. his mind was elsewhere, still toying with every scenario he could conjure - what if this, what if that, what if what if. in the end, every conclusion was the same, and there was no real choice. it was either ask him out, or ask him out. wes didn't think he had it in him to just _not._ he grabbed grady’s elbow. grady stopped in his tracks, and wes took his hand back. _what?_ grady said.

wes was about to do it, about to ask, when a familiar red car pulled up beside them. inside was margaret levin, her frizzy dark hair pulled into a big ponytail. wes stared at her, paralyzed into inaction, and she stared back. grady looked between them.

 

**viia.**

 

“i didn’t know wes, um,” margaret said. “it’s been a long time.”

“are you talking to me?” grady said. “or him?” he grabbed wes’s wrist possessively - possessively? - and felt him jolt a little in his grip.

“are you getting in?” margaret said, ignoring him, looking awkward.

“no,” grady said. out of the corner of his eye, he saw wes’s hair bounce as he looked between them, mother and son, scylla and charybdis.

margaret swallowed. grady saw her throat shift and her jaw clench. she stared ahead. “that’s fine,” she said. she glanced at him once more. “please be home by dinner, okay? please. and tell him i’m sorry?”

“you do it,” grady said immediately, sneering. his mother rolled her eyes in return, her shoulders loosening - of course that would relax her, nothing made either of them feel more at ease than trading looks with each other. she drove away then, leaving the two of them standing there, grady staring where her car had been. he realized he was holding wes’s wrist only when he took it back.

 

**viib.**

 

they climbed into wes’s car and instead of asking him out, wes found himself saying _do you remember bunny?_ he grinned, watching grady drop his head into his hands, shouting something against them around a smile.

wes shoved his hands into grady’s space, signing _bunny bunny bunny_ until grady whipped an arm out, pushing him back into his seat. bunny was grady. wes didn't remember anymore how it had happened, only that it happened at all. one day grady was just grady, and the next he was not only grady but bunny. wes had teased him with it, two devious fingers held up like little ears, grass and carrots and dumb jokes about his teeth. and then there were all of their childhood notes, addressed “to bunny, from wes.” it was stupid, but the memories made wes feel warm, just like he was laying in the grass and the sun was stinging his arms, and the way grady smiled made him feel like the sun was right there, and he was before it, and he was on fire.

 _i hate that name,_ grady said with a smile that told wes he didn’t hate it, not really, maybe not at all. _asshole. of course you remember that._

 _how could i forget?_ wes thought. under his bed he still kept a little box of the old notes, and underneath the notes were the little softcover yearbooks their elementary school gave out, the inside covers of which were all signed by bunny, punctuated with a crude set of long ears.

wes started the car. grady belted himself in, turned on the radio, danced his fingers along the buttons and dials until he found something he liked. he turned the dial for the volume until he couldn’t, and wes pulled out of the parking lot with his entire car vibrating around him. he tapped the steering wheel along with the beat, which he could feel shaking him in his seat.

 

*

 

wes didn’t ask grady out.

they stopped at wes's house and he snuck a pair of beers from his mother's cache in the shed, and then wes drove them back out to where they could park the car and hike to the little schoolhouse, which was hidden away in a thicket of trees dense enough that it might as well be a forest. grady carried the beer in his backpack. _why did you only grab two?_ he snarked, and wes slapped his wrist.

they walked side-by-side through the high grass, hopping over twisty roots and out-of-place logs. grady nearly fell to his knees after tripping over an old, discarded bottle, arms dropping out to catch himself. wes, almost without having to think at all, grabbed the shoulder of his sweatshirt and yanked him back upward, upright. _okay?_ he said.

wes nearly lost his breath, seeing the way grady looked back at him, a cross between some kind of misplaced awe and - something else, something that had him all wide-eyed and open-mouthed. wes's other hand was free, the first still bunched in the shoulder of grady's sweatshirt, so he used it to say _what?_ but grady was already grabbing his cheeks and bringing him in for a kiss, catching him completely off guard.

grady had never kissed before, it was clear, but it was simple enough, sweet enough, that it didn't matter at all, just their mouths touching. it was over as soon as it happened, and grady's whiskers brushed roughly against wes's face as he pulled back. and then they were standing there, staring at each other under the patchy, dappled sunlight filtering through the treetops. wes's heart was hammering so hard, he was almost scared for himself. _why?_ he managed.

 _sorry,_ grady said, finally taking his hands from wes's face. wes missed them immediately.

 _don't be,_ wes said, _but why?_

grady's answer was unexpected: he pressed wes's back to the nearest tree and kissed him again. his hands were on wes's chest, so wes grabbed grady's face instead. grady leaned into his palms, and wes's heart was in the stratosphere.

 _i wanted to,_ grady said. _you want to too, don't you?_ he looked unsure, a little worried.

 _yeah,_ wes said, feeling dumb. _i do._ he let his hands skate over grady's arms, wished for a moment that he didn't need his hands to speak so he could just hold grady's hand and never let go, like ever.

 _i knew it,_ grady said, a sly little smirk on his face. _i knew you wanted me._

wes shoved him roughly with one hand. _can you blame me?_ he said. he felt like he was in a rocket, looping circles around the moon. it felt like his skull was spinning. and grady - grady was looking up at him with his big eyes behind his ugly glasses, a bit of sweat shining on his forehead, and he was so beautiful. _who wouldn't want you?_

grady snorted. _that's a list i don't have time for,_ he said.

 _what do you have time for?_ wes said, hoping it involved the two of them and their mouths and maybe, once they came down from the high, the beers in grady's backpack.

grady glared up at him as he reached up, wrapping both arms around wes's shoulders and leaning up.

 

 

**viia.**

 

grady could kiss wes forever.

the schoolhouse was only a few yards away, spitting distance, but there they stood, wes’s spine pressed firmly against a tree. it was everything grady dreamed of when he let himself - when he was so lonely he sat with his forehead pressed against the cold glass of his window, glaring at the twinkly stars and the moon and the flashing lights of the airplanes that flew over north dakota. it was soft, it was warm, it was like diving headfirst into the chilly ocean and sliding into a hot bath at the same time. he imagined two hands, and a puzzle underneath them, and two empty spots side-by-side. the hands set a piece in one at a time, and the puzzle was finished, and it was a perfect picture, a vibrant forest on a summer evening.

grady was so wrapped up in kissing wes, the newness of it, how right it felt, that he didn’t manage to hear the hollers bouncing off the trees and the crunch of the forest floor below heavy footfalls until it was almost too late to do much more than take his mouth off wes and let his eyes follow his ears.

a nameless gaggle of boys their age, all shaped the same, all variations on the same theme of _plaid asshole,_ were standing off to the side, one carrying a stereo, another two cases of beer. obviously they were coming to the old schoolhouse for the same reason. “fuck is this!” one of them exclaimed, a cruel glee on his face. “s'at levin? shit, and wes?”

“fuck do you need to know!” grady shouted back, hackles raised. he fisted his hands in wes's shirt. he glanced at wes and felt his heart drop a little - he looked so confused.

“never seen you up here before, levin,” the same one said. bullies and bastards and even some school faculty took to calling him _levin_ as opposed to _grady._ they were as uncomfortable with the name he gave himself as he was with the one he'd been given. it was an ugly compromise, grady supposed. either way, _levin_ was becoming more and more of a pejorative than a name. “never really seen you anywhere though. didn't think you left the closet much.” some of his friends laughed. he laughed, practically patting himself on the shoulder.

“fuck you,” grady said. he turned his attention back to wes, who had been endlessly tapping at his arm, his shoulder, trying to get a handle on what was being said. _assholes trying to fuck around,_ he said, what he thought was a fair and succinct summary, _we can go somewhere else._

 _okay bunny,_ wes said, nudging vaguely, affectionately, at grady's forehead with his nose. it made grady sigh, hopelessly enamored.

the plaid assholes shouted and whooped. grady could feel himself, everywhere, breaking into a hot, angry sweat. he hated it, and he hated himself, and he hated his body, and he hated the sweatshirt he was wearing. he grabbed wes's wrist and started to lead him back the way they'd come, when -

 

 

**viib.**

 

almost as soon as he’d started leading them away, grady froze in place after a full-body flinch. wes glanced at the guys. they were all snickering, looking all smug and triumphant. grady was limp enough that wes could easily pry his hand from his wrist. he stepped around in front, saw grady’s face - he was wide-eyed and his mouth was tight, a high flush on his cheeks, he looked like he might cry. _what did he say?_ wes said.

grady tried to wave his hands - forget it - but wes wasn’t about to forget it. he didn’t spray _dunham get fucked_ on the side of their high school in pink spray paint for no reason. _what did he say?_ wes said again.

grady’s expression hardened, but the angry flush persisted. his rapid breathing made his chest heave. _i don’t need you to defend me, asshole!_ he said. of course, grady would turn on him to try and save himself. _i can take care of it myself!_

wes’s mind jumped to dunham’s broken nose. _just because you can doesn’t mean you have to, shit-for-brains,_ he said. _let me._ he grabbed grady’s face. grady tried to break from it, almost doglike, but he gave up almost immediately. wes tried to keep his grip firm, steadying, and he watched as grady almost stopped quaking in his spot. he could still see a little tremble in grady’s knees, but he was steady, for the most part. he drew grady in close, so their foreheads touched, and all wes could see was grady’s eyes, and all grady could see were wes’s.  
  
wes pulled away and took his hands back. _tell me what he said,_ he said once more.

 

  
  
**viia.  
**

 

grady rubbed the antiseptic on wes's split knuckles. he kept replaying it in his mind: repeating back what the king of the plaid assholes had said, watching wes's eyes change, watching him dispatch his fist like it was nothing. they were sitting in the backseat of wes's car, a first aid kit open on the seat between them. wes's hand was so warm in both of his, it was like the sun was a person, and that person was wes.

 _that was the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me,_ grady said after delicately setting wes's hand down on the seat. that was a lie, probably. his mother had made some rough sacrifices for him, but that was kind of her job. she was his mom, after all. so maybe it was true. no one besides her, and rachael, had been so nice to grady since he started to live honestly.

 _why are you still so good at signing?_ wes said. the question almost blindsided grady. after a week of nothing, he'd begun to hope that wes simply hadn't noticed how practiced he was. he should've known better - wes was always so perceptive. he used to know when something was wrong with grady before grady even knew, could read his microexpressions like they were simple english.

grady felt like he was standing under a spotlight. he weighed his options, lies or truths, and decided, ultimately, that lying was no way to start a relationship - if what was between them would become that, anyway. _i guess that's a talk for another time,_ he thought. either way, he decided it was best to be honest. _margaret sent me to classes,_ he said, _after we stopped talking. she thought it would be useful._

wes stared. he looked pissed, he looked sad, he looked... like hell. he looked like hell. and how insulting that must have been to read on grady's too-good hands, that margaret didn't trust him enough to play with her son but liked his language enough to imagine it decorating his resume someday, or something. in wes's car, his wounded hand between them, evidence of his allegiance, his loyalty, grady hated margaret. _i thought of you every time,_ grady said.

 _good,_ was all wes said.

 


	9. addendum to: chapter five.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> grady foolishly believes he is alone.

**viia.**

 

grady was still a little dizzy from wes’s goodnight kiss as he carefully, quietly eased open the side door and crept through. he remembered the feeling of wes’s long, slender fingers on his back, just under the band of his binder, tickling him just so through his sweatshirt. his heart fluttered and he smiled at nothing, weaving around furniture in the dark.

he felt dumb, stupid, foolish. he felt dizzy. he felt _wonderful._

he had felt his way into the living room, and he was so lost in the brand new memories he was reliving that he nearly jumped out of his body when the lamp suddenly flickered on and there was margaret, standing on the stairs with one hand on the light switch, the other on her hip.

“you missed dinner. where were you?” she said. grady could tell she was actively trying to keep it civil, neutral - her eyebrow tended to twitch when she was irritated. grady’s did, too. he watched across the room as it jumped against her forehead.

“out,” grady said. he weighed his options: stand his ground or try to shoulder past her and make it to his room.

“with who?” margaret said.

grady prickled. “ted fuckin’ _bundy,_ mom, who the hell do you think i was with?” he said.

they stared at each other, grady standing there in the corner of the living room in his sweaty mtv logo sweatshirt, margaret in her blue nightgown.

“language,” she mumbled before she turned in a dramatic ripple of silk and ascended back up the stairs.


	10. preamble to: chapter six.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> everything is good.

**viiia.**

 

grady thanked whatever it was in the heavens, or whatever lurked in life’s shadows, that had put him in the basement of this musty gray church, getting kissed within an inch of his life by the boy he’d fantasized about running away with someday when they were kids.

they were hiding behind an old wicker trunk, carefully tucked away, the top of which was stacked with two plastic totes. they were perfectly concealed like that, sitting on the cool concrete floor which so starkly contrasted where their bodies touched, blazing hot. they were twisted around each other just so.

grady wrapped his fist around the red knot of wes’s silly bandana that sat perfectly in the hollow of his throat and held on, a little lifeline as wes slid his hand into grady’s hair. he felt wes smile, and it made him smile, too, and soon they were smiling too much to keep kissing.  


margaret didn’t ask him about the little bruises on his neck that night, but he knew she saw. after all, he hadn’t really gone to the trouble of hiding them.


	11. chapter six, part one.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a little bit of playing house.

**ixa.**

 

_where are we going?_ grady said. he’d been outside what, one minute? and he was already almost sweating through his sweatshirt. he’d gotten it from one of the boxes in the church basement, stuffing it in his backpack one afternoon. it was gray and it had a faded, peeling tiger snarling on the front.

_surprise,_ wes said.

grady groaned and stuck his tongue out. _i hate surprises,_ he said.

_i know,_ wes said, a little smirk on his face that reminded grady just how much of a shit he could be. grady stared at his mouth and realized just how much he wanted to kiss the smarmy look off his face, and then he remembered that he could, if he wanted to, and so he did. he lurched out of his seat and messily pressed their mouths together, so he felt more than heard the soft grunt that escaped wes when their mouths connected.

_calm down,_ wes said after they’d parted, looking a little dazed. _need anything before we get going?_

_will there be food there?_ grady asked, thinking with his stomach. one of his bad habits.

wes cocked his head. it was cute when he did that, like he was some sort of overgrown puppy. grady scooted down low in his seat, angling himself so he was mostly glaring up at wes from under his eyelashes. if he looked at wes too long, if he looked at wes directly, his heart would start melting and his face would get hot. looking at wes was a lot like looking at the sun, sometimes.

_i can just make you something there,_ wes said finally.

_you can cook?_ grady said, somewhat taken aback. he imagined it instantly, wes standing in front of a stove in his dreamy blue jeans and his impossible leather cowboy boots, poking some meat around in a pan with a spatula. the domesticity of the scene immediately frightened and excited him in equal measure.

_sometimes,_ wes said. _for my mom._ and grady knew what he meant by that. both of their mothers were on their own, and grady knew that there was nothing quite as heartbreaking as seeing his mother cradling her own head while sitting at the kitchen table, shoulders shaking with quiet sobs.

just minutes ago, grady had said a rough goodbye to his mother, who was home from work after a dental exam. “see you later,” he’d said, barely looking her way in his haste to get out the door.

“excuse me - grady, where are you going?” she said, jumping to her feet and padding after him.

“going out with wes,” grady said.

“wes,” she’d said in an awful tone, “wes.”

“yeah, wes,” grady said, suddenly venomous. “do you have a problem, maggie?” his father had called her maggie almost exclusively and grady, chip off the old fucking block he was, sometimes flung it at her in his most vindictive moments. because he was terrible.

margaret had pressed her mouth into a thin line. her eyebrow twitched. “where are you two going?” she said.

“i don’t know,” grady said. “somewhere.”

margaret had dropped her hands onto grady’s shoulders then. he tried to shrug out of them but she squeezed him, held him in place. “bubeleh, i want you to be careful,” she’d started to say.

“mom! he’s not dangerous,” grady said. “he never has been.”

that seemed to cut her a bit. grady saw the guilt splash across her face, plain as day. she knit her brow, and it was like looking in a mirror, and that pissed grady off just a bit more. “maybe you’re right. he was just a kid then, like you, and i was just scared. but he was a kid,” she said, “and people change. i’ve seen him around town, you know, making… trouble. those guys he hangs around with.”

grady shoved her wrists away and her hands fell from his shoulders. “they won’t be there,” grady had said in a low, even tone, even if he didn’t know if they would be. he knew they wouldn’t be. he hoped they wouldn’t be. grady, it seemed, was only good at being a person when he was with wes. anyone else and it all fell apart. besides, he wanted to be alone with wes, and that thought sent his stomach roiling. “wes is fine. he’s not just some… jerk. he...” and he remembered the other day, rubbing antiseptic into wes’s knuckles after he’d punched the shit out of the plaid asshole after he’d said that disgusting shit about grady. the shit he’d cried about when he got home that night, curled up in the shower.

“well, why is he doing community service, grady?” she said, rocking back, affecting an authoritative stance: hands on her hips, shoulders squared. grady’s glare hardened in turn. “did you ask him - ”

“it’s community fuckin’ service mom, you get it if you look at the principal wrong - ”

“ - or were you too busy making googly eyes at him to consider that maybe you should ask.”

there had been a fierce challenge in her eyes, the very same that grady imagined her opponents saw in the courtroom.

her comment had grady’s face flaring, hot hot red like a stop sign or a red light, but he’d ignored it.

“he’s not fucking dangerous, margaret,” grady said, “he’s _wes._ ”

“i just want you to be safe, grady, why is that so hard for you to comprehend!” she screamed. her voice was so wild, raw, loud that grady actually took a step back. she looked like a lion, hair loose and curly and bursting. “i kicked your father out to keep you safe. i stopped talking to your brother - for _months!_ \- to keep you safe. i forbade you from being friends with wesley in the first place to keep you safe! i’ve done it all for _you!_ these past few years have been all for you! why is it that you can’t - ”

“i never asked you to do any of that!”

“ - why is it that you can’t understand what it’s like for _me_ \- ”

“i was safe!” grady yelled, his voice cracking and breaking in his effort to be heard over his mother’s impressive volume. “i was _safe_ with him. he saved me. i almost drowned!

“i’m not a helpless little girl,” grady had managed to spit with every last bit of venom he had before pivoting as fast as he could and running out the door. _not like i used to be._

grady finally returned to himself, sitting in the car beside wes. he blinked hard, then blinked again. _okay,_ he said. _let’s just go then._

_you sure you’ll survive without all that candy shit you eat?_ wes said.

_fuck you, grandpa,_ grady said. his eyes fell on the living room window, where he could see his mother standing, staring. watching. wes put the car in reverse and started backing out of the driveway. grady met his mother’s big, sad eyes. she weakly waved at him through the curtains. grady raised his hand and waved back.

  


**ixb.**

 

the car thrummed around wes as he navigated the road. grady was rocking beside him, headbanging to the beat, his dark, messy hair flying. he seemed like he was singing along, too. he was beautifully oblivious to everything - to wes, to the world rolling past them. wes had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing at him. not out of malice, or even amusement, really. wes felt the laughter in him blooming out of the pure joy that was watching grady _being_ \- being vibrant, alive, unabashed. he gripped the steering wheel a little tighter.

they came to the last turn before his aunt’s street, an old, beaten path that was barely a road. they bumped along and hit a particularly rough patch of road that had grady bouncing a little violently in his seat. he snapped out of his reverie, then, and glanced around. he darted a hand out and turned the music down, like it mattered. it was all the same to wes, after all.

_are we almost there?_ he said. wes nodded vaguely and pointed ahead as they rolled into their final turn, a left down his aunt’s long driveway. out of the corner of his eye, he watched grady’s mouth drop open as he took in the rickety farmhouse and the old, hulking barn and the modest stables tucked behind both. wes grinned. _what a little suburbanite,_ he thought.

grady seemed to wait until they were safely parked off to the side, beside the barn, before he spoke again. _your aunt’s house?_ he said.

wes gave him a look that he hoped said it all - _obviously, asshole._ grady stuck his tongue out again. _wanna see the horses?_ he said.

_sure,_ grady said.

they got out of the car. wes idled by his door while grady rounded the front of the car. wes stuck his hand out when grady met him there.

grady stared down at his hand, looking between it and wes’s face. he felt the sweat burst across the back of his neck, but he didn’t waver. grady took wes’s hand without another thought, and his insides flashed like christmas lights.

it felt right. it felt natural. it felt good. wes was nine again for a second, letting grady lead him by the hand to the playground, the treehouse, the creek. wes tugged on grady’s hand, just once, and then they started their walk back toward the stables.

  


**ixa.**

 

_butterscotch,_ wes spelled, _biscuit._

butterscotch and biscuit were almost identical, which made sense after wes explained that they were sisters. _butterscotch is older,_ wes said.

_which one’s your favorite?_ grady said.

wes looked offended. his mouth was hanging open a little. _why would i ever pick a favorite,_ he said. _they’re both good girls._

grady threw up his arms and bit at his own grin. _people pick favorites!_ he said. _not weird._

_do you?_ wes said. _do you have a favorite sibling? does your mom have a favorite kid?_

grady chuckled. wes was adorable, and so obviously an only child. “yeah!” he said. _i like rachael best and mom likes me most. i know it._ perhaps he knew it too well, considering all that she really had done for him the past few years. he thought of the barbs he’d struck her with earlier, and he thought that he’d have to do something to make up for it.

wes seemed to pay him no mind because he just grabbed grady’s wrist and yanked, which made him pitch forward a bit before regaining his footing. he decisively set grady’s hand on biscuit’s nose. _rub,_ wes said. _she likes it._

grady glanced at wes, feeling a little apprehensive. he’d never been this close to a horse before. it was intimidating. biscuit - and butterscotch - was huge and clearly powerful. grady could plainly see the muscles of her legs, her neck. and her hooves were so big. but she also had such pretty eyelashes, and her mane looked silky and well-maintained. _unlike me,_ grady couldn’t help but think, suddenly self-conscious over the rat’s nest on his head. _what the fuck,_ he thought, _am i comparing myself to a horse?_

he rubbed biscuit’s nose.

_good girl,_ wes said to her, patting her side. suddenly his face lit up, and his green eyes were wide and excited. _do you want to go for a ride?_

grady jerked his hand back from biscuit. “um,” he said.

_it’ll be fun!_ wes said, and he looked so excited that grady knew that he was probably going to say yes.

grady didn’t want to tell wes that he was scared. he’d never ridden an animal before - fuck, he could barely ride his bike sometimes. he imagined falling off of butterscotch and immediately getting his face caved in by her massive hoof. it wasn’t pretty.

_it’s okay,_ wes said, and he ducked his head and gave grady a kiss: wet, warm, perfect. _it’s okay,_ he said again, oblivious to how much it meant to grady.

_are you trying to seduce me into getting on this horse?_ grady said, punctuating with a pat on biscuit’s head. he couldn’t help being a snarky little shit. sometimes it seemed like it was in his dna.

_is it working?_ wes said. grady shrugged because he didn’t want to admit that it did work. just one kiss from wes had grady feeling calm and grounded in an instant. wes smiled. grady gave him a little shove. _i’ll get the tack._

 

*

 

they were making slow loops around the fenced-in yard just beyond the stables. wes was sitting behind grady on the saddle, and he held the reins. grady was pleasantly, warmly nestled against wes’s chest, and he felt amazing, and he felt happy. the only thing that sucked about it (because something sucked about everything, because grady was terrible) was that they couldn’t talk, and all that grady felt like doing lately was talking to wes.

it was like they’d never stopped being friends even though it had been so long. so many things about wes were the same: his smile, his mischievous nature, the face he made when he was pissed. the way he looked at grady when they talked. the way he looked at grady, period. but then, so many things were different. there was a huge gap, an empty void between their abrupt end and their brand new beginning. wes had a subtle sort of confidence now, and he had warm, strong arms, and hair along his jaw. grady relaxed further, melting against wes’s chest. _who are you?_ he wondered. _who did you become without me?_ he wanted the answer, of course. he wanted to know everything about wes. grady thought that, if it were possible, he wouldn’t mind being shrunken down into an impossibly small size and made to sift through wes’s brain, his memories.

“i think i’m in love you you,” grady mumbled at the sunset, feeling out the words in his mouth.

  


**ixb.**

 

_play this._

grady squinted down at the record wes had just put in his lap. it was rumours, fleetwood mac. grady didn’t seem to recognize it at all. he looked back up at wes, question in his pretty little eyes.

_my aunt plays it all the time,_ wes said. _and that lady sings that song you like._ he put his finger on stevie nicks’s black and white head. _and,_ he didn’t say, _aunt carole reminds me of you, sometimes._

that seemed to embarrass grady sufficiently. _what song?_ he said.

_you know,_ wes said, _you were singing it in the car. you know the radio displays what song’s playing, right?_

grady was flushed, which was both hilarious and precious. _go make my dinner, bitch,_ he said, waving wes away.

aunt carole’s house was one of wes’s favorite places to be. it was a shabby old farmhouse that creaked and croaked, but it was cozy and it was safe. almost every room was painted a shade of brown, and in combination with the warm-bulbed lamps whose light bounced off those walls, it had an almost womblike effect, leaving wes feeling dizzy with warmth every time.

beautiful framed embroidered artwork hung on every wall, finished by carole in her spare time, and there were handmade afghans in the corner of every room. old, dried bouquets were carefully arranged in improvised vases - milk jugs, old tea tins, spare mugs. wes could feel the old hardwood creak under his feet with every step as he retreated into the kitchen, which was decorated with doilies and fake apples.

wes stood at the counter for a minute. sitting on it as a loaf of bread, some cheese, butter - wes wrinkled his nose.

he went back to the den, where grady was unsheathing the record. he hovered silently in the doorway while grady carefully, thoughtfully set the record on the turntable and sent it spinning. wes watched grady for an extra minute. grady leaned away from the record player, nestling back in his seat in the fat yellow armchair before it. he listened, and wes watched him listen and was content with it. if wes was being honest with himself, he would probably be content watching grady do nothing for the rest of his life.

it was amazing how fast his feelings for grady had come back, like overflow hitting a creek and flooding it out. he was just so interesting, so handsome, so - wes just wanted to be around him all the time, a thought with had him slowing down every once in a while and thinking _what?_

wes watched grady for an extra moment before he knocked firmly on the doorframe. grady looked back at him. _what?_ he said.

wes felt a little sheepish. he blew a hard breath through his nose before he asked _what’s kosher?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's edge of seventeen.


End file.
